Sheinbaum delays Trump tariffs

Feb. 3, 2025

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico struck a deal with the U.S. Trump administration to delay 25% tariffs, which were set to take effect tomorrow, for a month as the two countries reached a series of agreements on border security. Sheinbaum agreed to deploy 10,000 troops, who Trump said would be designated to stop the flow of migrants and illegal drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. (New York Times)

Trump launched a trade-war era on Saturday, hitting allies Canada and Mexico with tariffs of 25 percent on all goods. He also placed a 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods. (New York Times)

Trump said the tariffs were a response to illegal immigration and the “intolerable alliance” between drug trafficking organizations and Mexico’s government, which had allegedly offered safe haven to “dangerous cartels.” The allegations prompted furious backlash in Mexico, reports the Guardian. (La Jornada)

“We categorically reject the White House’s slanderous claim that the Mexico government has alliances with criminal organizations, as well as any attempt to intervene in our territory,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum wrote on X. “If there is anywhere that such an alliance in fact exists, it is in the United States gun factories that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups.”

Sheinbaum ordered retaliatory tariffs on Saturday, and said more details would be announced today. Yesterday she said that reason should prevail, raising her fist in the air as she said she does not lack courage to respond. (Reuters)

Yesterday the governors of Mexico’s 31 states and Mexico City backed Sheinbaum in a joint statement signed by politicians from across the political spectrum. “We energetically condemn the accusations that suggest there is a link between our government and narco-trafficking cartels,” it said. Mexico’s main business associations also voiced support for Sheinbaum. (Guardian, La Jornada)

The accusations that Mexico’s government is colluding with cartels was bigger news in Mexico than the tariffs themselves, and “may have made it more difficult for Sheinbaum to work towards a solution,” according to the Latin America Risk Report.

Immigration is a major factor behind Trump’s actions. He has accused Mexico of allowing a “mass migration invasion” into the United States, claiming that this had brought “crime, and drugs,” crushed wages and overwhelmed school systems.

Critics in all three North American countries say the tariffs will hurt U.S. consumers and industry as well as those in Canada and Mexico.

Sheinbaum’s administration has conducted major seizures of fentanyl and stepped up operations to locate and destroy clandestine fentanyl laboratories, as well as operations targeting Sinaloa Cartel leadership. The moves are unlikely to dent fentanyl trafficking, but send a clear message about the Mexican government’s willingness to cooperate with the U.S., reports the New York Times.

More Trade War

• The Wall Street Journal editorial board called Trump’s tariffs: “The Dumbest Trade War in History.”

• Part of Trump’s rational is that free trade with Mexico hurts U.S. manufacturers. But “many businesses say ties between the countries run deeper than most Americans realize, and policies like tariffs that seek to sever them would be painful. Of all the world’s major economic partners, the United States and Mexico are among the most integrated — linked by business, trade, tourism, familial ties, remittances and culture,” reports the New York Times.

• Different sectors of trade between Mexico and the U.S. provide potential avenues for retaliation, like agriculture, or vulnerabilities to Trump’s tactics, like automobile manufacturing or energy, reports the New York Times.

• “The threat of tariffs by Donald Trump is the latest in a long list of confrontations, from the dramatic debt crisis of the 1980s to clashes over the Iraq war and previous trade battles,” reports El País.

• Trump plans to kick Nicaragua out of the Central America free trade agreement (CAFTA-DR), saying the U.S. is uninterested in partnering with the Ortega regime. More than 60% of Nicaraguan exports went to the U.S. in 2022. (El País)

---

Rubio and the Panama Canal

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to escalate Trump’s confrontation with Panama. Yesterday Rubio said he told President José Raúl Mulino that Trump had determined that Chinese “influence and control” over the Panama Canal violates the neutrality clause of the treaties that handed over the waterway to Panama in 1999, and demanded “immediate changes.”

“Secretary Rubio made clear that this status quo is unacceptable and that absent immediate changes, it would require the United States to take measures necessary to protect its rights under the treaty,” according to the U.S. State Department summary of the meeting between Rubio and Mulino.

Mulino, provided a different account of the discussion, however, saying he did not believe had conveyed a threat that Trump might move to reclaim the shipping route. He said he saw little risk of such an intervention. “There is no question that the canal is operated by Panama and will continue to be so.”

He did however say the concession of two ports on either end of the Panama Canal, operated by Hong Kong based company, are being audited. “We have to wait for these audits to be completed, in order to draw our own conclusions and act accordingly,” said Mulino.

He also offered the U.S. help repatriating some migrants traveling towards the US through the country from South America if the US paid for it. Mulino suggested a possible expansion of an existing agreement with the US from last July that could pave the way for direct deportations of non-Panamanian migrants who cross the Darien Gap jungle on Panama’s southern border with Colombia.

Following yesterday’s meeting, Mulino said Panama will not renew a 2017 memorandum of understanding to participate in China's Belt and Road Initiative — apparently hoped at appeasing the Trump administration’s concerns about Chinese influence in Panama. Panama joined the Chinese initiative, which promotes and funds infrastructure and development projects, after dropping diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and recognizing Beijing. Mulino invited the State Department to promote US investment in the country.

(New York Times, Guardian, El País, AFP, Guardian, Associated Press)

More on Rubio’s trip

• As Trump amps up pressure on Latin America and the Caribbean, Rubio, is traveling through Central America. His main focus is likely to convince countries to sign “safe third country” agreements, to accept asylum seekers from other nations that are seeking refuge in the United States, reports the New York Times.

• Rubio will discuss the possibility of deporting suspected Tren de Aragua gang members to El Salvador in an upcoming meeting with Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele, according to State Department Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone. (CNN)

---

Grenell cuts deportation deal with Maduro

Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for special missions, met with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Friday. He said on social media that he was flying home from Venezuela with six American detainees. There were at least nine people with U.S. citizenship or residency detained in Venezuela, according to Venezuelan officials, some accused of plotting to kill Maduro. (New York Times)

Grenell also secured a commitment from Maduro to accept deported migrants, reports the Financial Times. “Human rights advocates and Venezuelan opposition politicians have warned against repatriating the citizens of a country that under Maduro has been an economically failing, politically repressive pariah state,” reports the Washington Post.

The Venezuelan government said in a statement that the talks were “respectful” and touched on migration, sanctions and detained US citizens, and that a “fresh start” was needed in relations between Washington and Caracas. It did not mention the release of the prisoners.

In parallel, the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., for more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the United States, a decision that will be made effective in 60 days, leaving the population vulnerable to potential deportation in the coming months, reports the New York Times. (See also El País.)

The announcement follows an earlier Trump administration decision to rescind an 18-month extension of temporary protected status (TPS) that had been introduced in the final days of the out-going Biden administration, notes the Guardian.

Regional Relations

• Feeling overwhelmed? “… It’s fair to say that, prior to last week, no week since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has shifted U.S. foreign policy in the region so dramatically. The movement and chaos that defined last week’s policy swings indicate that Latin America will face significant challenges over the coming four years from its northern neighbor,” writes James Bosworth in World Politics Review.

Migration

• Honduras received deportees on U.S. military flights on Friday, reports the New York Times.

Colombia

• Laura Sarabia, a close ally of President Gustavo Petro, is Colombia’s new foreign minister, replacing Luis Murillo, widely credited for defusing last week’s tariff/deportation faceoff between Petro and Trump. (El País)

El Salvador

• “Five Salvadorian environmental defenders who were exonerated of bogus civil war charges will face retrial this week amid growing evidence of political interference,” reports the Guardian.

Brazil

• Two years after Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to bring the Yanomami Indigenous people back from the brink, hunger and infant mortality rates are falling in their territory, reports the Guardian.

Argentina

• Tens of thousands of Argentines participated in anti-fascist protests on Saturday, pushing back against President Javier Milei’s anti-”woke” statements at Davos, including allegation that homosexuality is linked to child abuse and that femicide legislation values women’s lives over men’s. The march was organized by women's and LGBTQ rights groups with the backing of powerful trade unions and opposition politicians. (AFP)

• In Switzerland, Milei sharply criticized “sick wokeism,” social welfare, feminism, identity politics and the fight against climate change, adding that “in its most extreme versions gender ideology constitutes plain and simple child abuse.” (Associated Press)

• In little more than a year, Milei’s team at the Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation has already shut down 250 national directorates, secretariats and undersecretariats, and left 40,000 government employees out of a job. Hundreds of laws, decrees and ordinances were also eliminated, reports El País. Is it an inspiration for Elon Musk’s DOGE?

Culture Corner

• Thousands of worshippers clad in white robes spilled onto Arpoador beach in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday to pay homage to Yemanja, the Afro-Brazilian sea goddess, reports the Associated Press.

• New York Times on a striking restoration of “The Struggle Against Terrorism,” a 1934 mural by North American artists Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish at the Regional Museum of Michoacán.

Guston and Kadish created a work where the horrors of the Inquisition intersected with those of the Ku Klux Klan and the Gestapo. via The Estate of Philip Guston and Hauser & Wirth.